"Hedgehog is a different kind of robot that would hop and tumble on the surface instead of rolling on wheels. It is shaped like a cube and can operate no matter which side it lands on," Issa Nesnas, leader of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory team developing the idea, said in a statement.

The spacecraft itself is very simple.

The Hedgehog is shaped like a cube with spikes. It moves by spinning and braking flywheels housed inside the body, NASA said. The spikes themselves "act as feet" for the robot while hopping, and the spikes can protect the craft's body as well, NASA added.

"The spikes could also house instruments such as thermal probes to take the temperature of the surface as the robot tumbles," Nesnas said.

This spacecraft would stand out from today's spacecraft such as the Mars Rover, which uses a more conventional wheel-based propulsion system.

Researchers took two Hedgehog robots on parabolic, low-gravity simulating flights to see how they would behave in a the extremely low gravity environment of a small body like a comet or an asteroid. The two cube-shaped robots behaved well, even performing a tornado-like spin move to get up and out of a simulated sinkhole, according to NASA.

This kind of maneuver could be particularly beneficial on an object like a comet. The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has found quite a few deep sinkholes on its target, Comet 67P, that could hamper any traditional mission trying to use wheels on the surface of the icy mass.

Hedgehog robots are relatively cheap to build and multiple bots could be sent to one target at a time, scientists say.

This isn't the only NASA advanced concepts program idea in development for exploring comets and asteroids in the solar system. Another concept would use a tether and harpoon attached to a small spacecraft to allow it to "hitchhike" from one comet or asteroid to another, traversing the cosmos.

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